The Underwire spots the strike-assisted irony in that story from last week about the online release of the next installment of the Jackass franchise:
The studios are locked in a death grip with the Writers Guild of America over the future of digital entertainment. When negotiations began, the studios claimed there wasn’t yet enough money being made online for them to keep track of such new-fangled bangs and whistles. So, to prove their point that they’re not making any money online, Viacom is releasing a major feature film through the internet. Doh!
I don’t know if we can really classify a glorified blooper reel that would have gone direct to DVD anyway as “a major feature film,” but the argument’s still pretty solid. And Jackass is a particularly interesting example of the contested territory that the writers are striking over––although, I’m afraid that if I were to think too hard about someone “writing” something like the above, my brain might explode. In any case, can’t wait for the YouTube dramatization of this little twist in the saga to pop up on United Hollywood.
Our own Rick DeVos, Spout’s fearless leader, was interviewed and quoted in an Austin Chronicle article yesterday. The article, “The Future of Film on the Web,” talks about the overwhelming sea of content on the web, and how “The old days of a Web campaign for a film attracting audiences on novelty alone are over. …Instead, filmmakers are finding success in reaching out to online communities….”
Communities build excitement around discovering and sharing something with others, the article asserts, which is what filmmakers need to do today to make their movie stand out. This, of course, is where Spout comes in. Here’s part of what Rick has to say:
For Rick DeVos, founder and CEO of film community Spout.com, that’s where Hollywood goes wrong. “They think of community as, oh, I’ll put a message board on my Web site, and that’s building a community around this film. It’s much deeper and more complicated than that.”
Spout is a community first, a commercial entity second, and it’s powered by connections. “We’ve stolen liberally from Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas around the tipping point,” DeVos explains. “We think of our users as three components: You have the casual film consumer; you have the maven, the passionate film fan, the connector who’s tagging and blogging like crazy; and the filmmaker. We think of the maven as the way of connecting the consumer and the filmmaker. They’re a trusted voice in this sea of content.”
There’s a lot of excitement around the Spout offices today, as we watch the tickets sell for our first community film-watching event, tonight. We’ll be watching 51 Birch Street, a documentary by Doug Block about his parents’ marriage and the general mystery we call “family.” After the screening, we’ll host an online Q & A time with the director, then we’ll get as many people as possible to head over to our favorite local joint, The Cottage Bar, for some beer and continued discussion. (After tonight we’ll continue the discussion in a conversation group on spout.com)
The fact that we’re handing out drink discounts for the Cottage should help get a crowd to participate in the follow up. But from what I’ve heard about the film, I think people will feel compelled to be together and have opportunities to talk about the issues the film presents. That’s ultimately what’s exciting to me about this event, and about film festivals and any community film watching experience, really: the possibility to connect with others and parts of ourselves in new ways, around ideas sparked by films. And that’s why we’re testing this event–to find out how we can help individuals anywhere put together an event like this. We’ll let you know how it goes.
A guy and a girl are sitting in a bar. They’re discussing general things like work and mutual friends. She makes a film reference, he picks up on it, then the bartender, who has just come over to see if they want another round, says he loves that film too. Then he starts talking about another film and so on.
Films, people, and groups have an organic relationship. The lines are blurry. They’re constantly expanding and contracting, overlapping in all kinds of crazy configurations. People watch films, say something about them in a group, which prompts someone else to say something about another film. Maybe a handful of the people there make a point to see that film. And who knows? Every so often, a person who ends up watching the film may be changed forever.
Maybe they’ll take a completely different path in life, or maybe their view of the world will shift slightly. Then, as that person falls into relationships with various groups of people…well, you see where this is going. Along the way, people are talking about films with each other left and right. About a year ago, we thought: "If this can happen on an everyday basis in the physical world, what would happen if these organic relationships between people and film existed online, where geography isn’t an issue?"
(This screen shot is of the Spout Alpha site and may look very
different from the Spout Beta site that will soon be available to the
public)
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
